medical dental
How Anneke, a dentist in Pretoria East, halved her no-show rate without hiring more reception staff
Automated appointment reminders 24 hours before each booking, plus a recall cadence configured per patient, dropped no-shows materially.
Anneke runs a single-chair practice in Pretoria East. Her receptionist, Linda, was spending an hour each morning phoning patients to confirm appointments — and still seeing two or three no-shows a week, which is real money in a single-chair practice where the diary is full.
The fix was unspectacular. ClientPulse sends an automatic WhatsApp reminder 24 hours before every appointment, in the patient's preferred language (Afrikaans templates were a deal-maker for Anneke's older patient base). Patients who can't make it now reply to the reminder rather than no-show; Linda books the slot to a waiting-list patient by lunchtime.
Recall is the other half. Anneke's patients are now initialised into a recall cycle, configurable per patient — six-monthly, annual, or whatever each patient agreed to. ClientPulse triggers the recall message at the right month for each one, in their language. Patients who'd quietly drifted out of the practice — sometimes for years — started replying.
Linda still phones the VIP patients personally. ClientPulse covers the everyday volume.
“I bought ClientPulse for the reminders. The recall was the bonus that paid for it twice over.”
Anneke — Dentist, Pretoria East